


Yesterdays

by Sasskarian



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dragon Age Quest: The Battle of Denerim, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, King Alistair, Mabari Puppies, Minor Alistair/Female Warden, POV Alistair, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Time Skips, Ultimate Sacrifice, and there are puppies involved, and zevran mourns the warden, in which alistair marries anora for the good of the kingdom, it's happy in a way i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 12:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14057025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasskarian/pseuds/Sasskarian
Summary: Yesterday I lost my closest friendYesterday I wanted time to endI wonder if my heart will ever mendI just let you slip awayMild AU exploration taking place through the years of Dragon Age. A sacrificed Surana warden, the Hero's legacy, a King's regrets, and picking up broken pieces.Also puppies.





	Yesterdays

**Author's Note:**

> Battle of Denerim, Post Battle, Post Inquisition, Unspecified

***  
9:31D  
***

He’s always thought she was invincible.

Sure, Morrigan told them the truth of the Archdemon’s death, an account more grisly and heartbreaking than the one Riordan gave; just the sort of tale that might ensnare a young boy’s heart, give him delusions of grandeur, while an older man might look upon it with resignation. But the truth doesn’t sink in until now. 

Everything seems to happen at once, time slowed to a crawl.

She perches atop the beast’s head, the blade of her staff buried between its eyes, Dalish archers raining arrows around her like a rippling veil. She makes it look graceful, Valira does, and for a moment he can feel the same things she does. Later, he’ll put it down to the taint connecting them, or perhaps a burst of uncontrolled magic escaping her focus, but in that instant, he feels the jolt of blade meeting bone meeting brain, feels the slick, black blood under his feet. She’s taken her boots off, digging nimble toes between patchy scales, trying to find purchase where there is none. 

The demon shakes its great head, trying to dislodge her, but the blade is true and she puts all her weight behind it, twisting as she pours magic into the staff until the wood trembles beneath their hands, straining not to burst under the task she asks of it. From across the field, he knowsfeelswatches her eyes seek him out, meet across the distance so short and so vast, and her lips form her lover’s name. A bid to take care of him, of  _them_ , all of their small, strange family. 

And then… 

And then she is haloed by a pure, shining golden light, lit up like Holy Andraste herself, and he feels the moment the dragon’s soul slams into her, knocks her free when neither gravity nor battle has done so. She’s always been so fierce, so quietly strong, he’s half thought she might survive, might tame that great and monstrous force the same way she’s tamed Oghren, the way she’s slipped and slid her way into the hearts of people who should have, by all measure, hated each other. 

But her ferocity is a weak thing compared to the vastness of the dragon, a flicker of candlelight in the dark, crushing night. A tide of age and exhaustion and forbidden knowledge curls through her, snuffs out that tiny flame with no effort at all, and… she falls, her form a graceful arc that somehow doesn’t shatter against the pavement. When he rushes to her, the last of her touch has slipped away from him, leaving him alone in his head again. 

He sees Zevran’s trembling hand stroking her hair, tresses of chestnut and gold winding through his fingers as he whispers his denial into her throat, the way he’s whispered words of love. And aren’t they still words of love, in a way? Alistair doesn’t have to hear them to know what Zevran is saying:  _don’t go. Not like this. Don’t leave me alone._  

Or is that him? 

In the long ago daylight of Ostagar, when his brother— his poor, lost brother— still wore a crown and a small, wide-eyed elven mage stood in front of him, he thought she’d get them all killed. Duncan worked in strange ways, but the value of a bookworm fresh from her library, a probable-wasteful death to the Joining, had been lost on him until he’d seen her, darkspawn in flames around her and a new stubborn set to her chin. Still small, still vulnerable— might as well have had  _bait_  stamped across her brow— but a conduit for the Fade all the same. 

…that moment marked her as invincible to him. He’s never let go of that sight until now, until the spell of Valira Surana broke under the weight of something she should never have faced. 

* * *

***  
9:35D  
***

* * *

“You’re visiting again, aren’t you.” 

His wife’s question is more of a statement. They’ve been married long enough that he hears the regret beneath the cool tone and a spark of affections warms him on this cold day. That she’s traveled with him is a surprise, but a soft one. She no longer stands at his side the way she did in the first years of their reign, but she is there to support him just the same. 

He doesn’t love Anora. Or, he doesn’t love her the way he’s always hoped to love someone he marries. But there is affection between them, enough that he lingers when he kisses her cheek, that her hands seek out his, warm even through his leather gloves. Enough that the slim crown on his brow doesn’t feel as heavy as it did when it was first placed there. 

Anora is his partner in many ways, a foil for his sometimes-too-idealistic way of ruling, but there’s no secret between them who is better for Ferelden. There are days he wakes up and wishes he were still a Warden, still hunting darkspawn during the Thaw with other recruits. Those are the good days, at least. The not-so-good days… well. Those are the ones where he sees Val fall again, and wishes he could take her place. 

_I know you said to Riordan that you would take the final blow, but let me,_  he’d begged.  _This is my duty._  

One of those rare, shy smiles had lit up her face, something shadowed and heavy in her gaze.  _And you think I’d let you sacrifice yourself, do you?_  She’d asked, leaning on her staff, splattered with black blood she wears as regal as the crown she wants to give him.  _We’re both Wardens, but only one of us is a King._  

“Fancy seein’ you here,” a voice says, the greeting as rough as its speaker. Oghren steps from under the trees in Redcliffe, a pale shadow of the fierce, redheaded man Alistair remembers from firelit camps. The tell-tale tinge of Warden grey clashes with his skin, a sickly reminder of his new post at Amaranthine. “Shoulda known.” 

“It’s right,” Alistair says, accepting the friendly slap on his thigh with a wheeze. He doesn’t bother with armor much, these days, but he always comes to her monument in his aging Warden cuirass. It makes him distinctive, Anora says, a target, but Alistair reminds her gently that it’s good for the people to see him paying his respects.  _Too easy for history to be lost when things settle down._  

The two are silent for a while, standing side by side, former Warden and current. “That fella from Orlais,” Oghren says into the quiet, “he ain’t half bad. For an Orlesian.” 

“I hope you go home to little Val eventually,” Alistair replies, the honorific name leaden on his tongue. “Someone should know our stories.” 

A hooded shadow saves Oghren from making an excuse, as he does every year. Even through the Crow mask, the gold of Zevran’s hair is distinctive; the warm, wine-heady accent of Antiva twined through his voice just serves to confirm his identity. Valira’s dog sits at his heels, stubby tail giving a brief wag. 

“It’s good to see you, Zev,” Alistair says quietly. “I worry about you.” 

“I am…” Zevran trails off, thoughtful. Oghren pretends he isn’t listening, but Alistair can see the tense set of his shoulders as they wait. Finally, Zevran pushes his Crow mask up, revealing a face not too unlike the one Alistair remembers from those long-ago camp nights. There are lines around his eyes, now, what Anora calls crow’s feet— and if that isn’t some form of irony. Val would have loved that— and around the corners of his mouth. Age is coming for them all, eventually, and seeing the handsome assassin showing some of the years at last is a stark reminder of inevitability. 

Finally, Zevran speaks, his voice low, hoarse with truth. “I am as well as I can be, my friend.” 

* * *

***  
9:44D  
***

* * *

Alistair isn’t a man who gets angry easily. For most rulers, he thinks, that’s a good quality. But the damage to Val’s monument turns his vision red for a minute: Chips have been blown out of the griffin statue’s wings, and there is a burst-and-crackle shadow where a lightning spell has scarred the base. For a moment, one small, petty, anger-fueled moment, Alistair regrets offering refuge to the rebel mages; leaving them to die in their stupid war might have saved the gentle holiness of this place. Val’s place. 

But as he sinks onto the stone bench, he can feel, as real as anything, the cool touch of Valira’s hand on his cheek.  _Alistair,_  she’d say,  _you honored me more by showing kindness to my fellow mages than you did with a statue._  Or maybe she’d say,  _Kindness ripples across the Fade, but statues are only stone._ Or she’d say… 

Or… she’d say… 

With a half-sob, he realizes he’s forgotten the sound of her voice. Oh, he remembers how it made him feel, all those years ago, all the glorious, shining moments where happiness dwells still. But what she truly sounded like, what sounds she made as she buried herself in books, the snap of her magic, the low buzz of her and Zevran whispering in their tent, all of that is  _gone._  He knows it happened, but the memory is lit dimly in his mind, a torch burned too low to be flame but not low enough for embers yet. 

“Oh, Maker,” he whispers into his palms, and only when he raises his eyes does he realize the last of the grey taint has faded from his skin. 

* * *

***  
Present Day  
***

* * *

“I am sorry,  _amor._ ” 

Zevran’s soft voice carries on the wind as Alistair hikes up the hill. He stills, and listens, and realizes that somewhere in the neglected pile of papers on his desk is probably a letter bearing the same grim news. 

“He was a crude, smelly little man,” Zevran continues, his back to the statue and eyes closed against the dawn. The dog lays across his lap, cracking one eye open and giving a little ‘boof’ when he sees Alistair. “But I think I shall miss him all the same.” 

In the silence that falls, Alistair’s footsteps are offensive, too loud in the slow creep of light across the village. But his friend makes no move to ward him off, so he continues up the slope, leans his sword and scabbard against the statue, and sits next to Zevran. Between them, there is no real need for words: the sorrow is palpable. Gentled, after long years, like a sharp cliff smoothed by endless waves, but still there. 

“Leliana is still spying on the world,” Zevran says, somehow sliding the sentence into the quiet without shattering it. “Morrigan is doing Morrigan things, now that the Inquisition is disbanded.” 

“And Oghren is dead,” Alistair finishes the list. “Sten’s the Arishok, Wynne is dead.” 

“And here we two sit, alone with our memories.” Zevran glances at him, one brow raised. “Are you in danger of going gray and ravenous?” 

Alistair sighs. He’s asked himself the same question for years now, expecting his veins to darken again, for the pounding in his head to turn to a dark song he follows underground to find oblivion one way or another. The Inquisitor sent him a letter, though, that confirms his suspicion. Fiona still hasn’t responded to him, not that he blames her; being kicked out of your son’s kingdom has to sting, even still. 

“No,” he answers at last. “It appears that Calenhad’s blood has cured me.” 

“Mm,” is Zevran’s only contribution for a while. The sun is shining through the clouds, shadows slithering across the ground as the beams breaking through gild the village around them. Something heavy and unpleasant coats Alistair’s mouth, a truth he knows he’ll have to say eventually. 

“A pity you cannot share that trait, no?” Zevran murmurs at last, shrewd eyes turning back to the horizon. “It seems the golden boy must watch all he knew wither, while he alone stays whole.” 

It’s a cruel statement. True, the same truth weighing Alistair’s heart like an anchor, and lacking the sharp edge of cruelty such a statement might have carried back in those camp nights, when they each loved the same woman. But cruel nonetheless, in an exhausted, wrung-out sort of way. Their rivalry is a cold, dead thing, long forgotten and forgiven, weak thing that it was, but the words echo with the memory of it. 

“I’m not whole,” is out of his mouth before he can stop it. “I have a kingdom and a wife who’s finally carrying an heir, I have a legacy of helping save my country, and at least two friends still alive.” Alistair stops, breathing in raggedly. His lungs strain, thick and wet, unable to draw enough air. “All of that and I’m still not really whole because she’s  _gone._ ” 

Zevran’s simple, “Yes,” is the last piece, a pebble that begins the avalanche of tears held back for too long. Thin, nimble fingers stroke his hair as he cries, rough, broken sounds that choke him, ring around his throat like a noose. He spills his tears into Antivan satin, curling close to the last of few touchstones from the days where curing a Blight was easier than sitting a throne and watching silver replace the gold in his hair. 

How long he cries, he isn’t sure, but the coolness of a slim shadow falling across them drags Alistair from the depths of his grief. A boy, no more than twenty, with hair the color of straw and the biggest, most ridiculous hat Alistair has personally ever seen, crouches in front of them. His head tilts way one, then the other, pale eyes wide despite the bright day. 

“Gold, his hair,” he says, soft and low. The words pull somewhere in Alistair’s chest, too close to the ache where Val used to be. “Gold, his eyes. Gold, his crown. Too good, like a fairy tale book from the Tower. He hurts, but the hurt is old. He can let it go. Maker, I miss her.” The boy turns those unsettling eyes to Zevran, who’s gone shock-still, hands curled on the dagger at his side. 

“Dalish blood and Dalish gloves. He looks at me and sees, shares more than he thinks. An earring. Trophy, declaration, proposal. An assassin must learn to forget about sentiment, but I cannot forget her. My Warden, my love.” 

“You must be Cole.” Zevran’s voice is tense, blade-sharp. 

‘Cole’ sits back on his heels, eyes wider than before. The smile that stretches his lips is slow, almost awkward, as if he’s never really learned how to. “Yes,” he says, sounding different. Younger. “Leliana told you.” 

“Why are you here?” The hiss from Zevran’s mouth is nothing Alistair has heard from him before; he barely recognizes the dangerous, bristling man next to him. 

Cole tilts his head again, brows furrowing. He laces his fingers together then pulls them apart, time and again; it takes a few minutes for Alistair to recognize the nervous tic for what it is. “Your hurt called me,” Cole finally says quietly. “I help people, and your pain brought me here.” 

He doesn’t seem worried about the dagger Zevran holds, or the (mostly ceremonial and almost entirely useless) sword in Alistair’s easy reach, and that’s somehow absurdly comforting. Instead, he turns his head toward the statue, eyes distant. Alistair feels like the boy is seeing something beyond the cracked, aged stone, and a shiver rolls down his spine. Leliana’s letters over the years mentioned Cole but only briefly, something or other about a spirit turning human, but he put that down to… wibbly Veil Fade nonsense. 

The proof, it seems, is sitting at his feet. 

*** 

“You’re back.” Anora rounds the corner, one hand splayed across the swell of her stomach. The late hour shows on her face in shadowed eyes, but he’ll never tell her so. A few months out of her life to look human is a drop against the well of grace she’s shown in the years they’ve ruled together. “How… how was it?” Her question is tentative, soft, like she’s pressing gentle hands to a wound. 

Instead of answering, Alistair settles his sword against the rack and drops his cloak to the floor. By the time he makes it to where his queen is standing, there’s a trail of garments leading back to the door: the faded Warden cuirass hangs half off a chair, his right boot lies in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor, and the left boot is nowhere to be found. To Alistair’s surprise, Anora’s eyes never leave his face, despite his invitation to look her fill. 

For half a second, he feels foolish. He is no King Cailan, broad of shoulder and noble of bearing, and the ghost of Anora’s marriage to his brother is something he’s struggled with in the past. But the longer he looks at her, the proud slope of her cheeks, the imperial brow whose arch had heralded many an argument, the more the warmth in his chest grows. When he kisses her, it is a soft, quiet thing that echoes in his bones and settles his heart. 

_She wouldn’t have put you together if you didn’t fit. Why do you keep fighting it?_  

“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” he asks, knowing the answer already. The surprise in her eyes is answer enough, so he kisses her again. Though theirs is an alliance, more than a marriage, Val had been right: they did fit together, the way she and Zevran fit together, and it is beyond time he stops putting a fading memory in a shrine. Perhaps his childhood notions of being “in” love need to be put aside as well. 

Even if waves of passion and lust don’t crash over him and knock him off his feet, he  _does_  love her. And they can have a good life, if he lets them. 

“You’re in a strange mood tonight, husband,” Anora says, just a hint of breathlessness in her voice. “I’m hardly sure what to think after everything else.” 

That pulls him up short. 

“What everything else?” 

A small yip is his answer, and Anora’s hand is tight on his when she leads him to the curtained basket. Breathing is harder than it should be as he reaches in and feels a cold, wet nose push against his hand. After a few fumbled grabs– and one under-his-breath curse that Anora will laugh about for months after– the pup is a wriggling, yipping mass of fur in his arms, stretching up to lick any available patch of skin she can. 

“This came with her,” Anora murmurs, handing him a letter. The seal is unbroken, surprisingly, and when he opens it (one-handed, because the pup whines every time he sets her down), a small amulet tumbles into his hand. Without looking, he knows it is the same Warden’s oath amulet he gave to Valira the night of her Joining, and he clutches it close, eyes misting. 

The page only bears one line, and he doesn’t have to ask who it’s from; the boy’s odd pattern of speech rings clear through the written word: 

_She says not to name this one Barkspawn._

 


End file.
